Kroger:
Holiday Cheer Challenge 2016

Much like the holidays themselves, the 2015 Kroger Cheer Challenge campaign was filled with love, laughter, and a lot of behind the scenes details. Through a series of short form videos and meticulously crafted content, we set out to spread holiday cheer once again by challenging Kroger’s social followers to complete a series of “Cheer Challenges.”

For two weeks straight, the front of our office was transformed into a colorful, over-exaggerated, whimsical wonderland—complete with our resident Goldendoodle puppy, gigantic inflatable ornaments, and a custom grocery store set. “The design team’s attention to detail during the set build out made our job easy,” gushed Senior Video Producer, Eli Sinkus. “Their dedication and hard work made all the difference when it came time to fire up the lights and cameras.”

One of Kroger’s primary social media goals is to connect with customers inside and outside the grocery store. With this in mind, we established ten unique challenges centered around elements of customers’ everyday lives. Challenges ranged from pet shaming, to recreating a childhood photo, to wearing a hideous holiday sweater down the freezer aisle. Not only did Kroger’s fans complete these challenges, they responded with hilarious, personal images and stories that warmed our hearts, and filled us with glee. Feliz Naughty Dog? Come on now.

Little did the fans know, our Community Managers were awaiting their comments with bated breath. We were armed with a cart full of treats to dish out to followers upon challenge completion. “I got to spend the last 25 days of my work year writing in Seussian Verse and giving people free goodies in exchange for adorable photos… is this real life?” wondered Community Manager, Cash Colburn.

To showcase this user-generated campaign content, we powered up an all new Grandstand experience to display customer photos in real-time on Kroger’s holiday microsite. With the latest version of our data-visualization tool, we were able to pull in photos posted as Facebook comments, in addition to content tagged with #CheerChallenge on Twitter and Instagram.

The campaign generated over 18 million impressions on Facebook alone, and 882,252 engagements between Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. AdWeek picked up on the increase in conversation during the campaign, identifying Kroger as one of the top consumer brands who sparked buzz during the holiday season.